Agile Center of Excellence…

I have been a Contracting Officer for over 15 years. I started my contracting career as a student intern. During this time, I honestly could not explain what acquisition was or how to professionally “procure” anything. My knowledge of procurement was limited to that of a college student.  As I transitioned into a full-time position as a Contract Specialist, the acquisition process became clear. My career as a Contract Specialist began in the Division of Information Technology Software Maintenance (DITSM). This was the first time I was introduced to digital services, although at this time, the items I procured were not known as digital services. I was responsible for purchasing software, maintenance, and corresponding support services. When I purchased software, I vividly remember discussions of the waterfall process and the many complications associated with it. I remember extending multiple contracts because the software did not successfully integrate into our production environment.

Fast forward several years later, where I have transitioned to the Division of IT Support Services (DITSS). During this time, I was again responsible for purchasing digital services, only this time the acquisitions I procured were much more complex. I often procured IT professional services with the goal of building customized enterprise-wide IT systems.  Similar to my time purchasing software, much of the development discussions centered around the waterfall software development lifecycle. I remember the agency discovering many issues after several months or years of developing software. While agile was up and coming in the private sector, my agency, at the time, did not fully adopt agile principles.

Now, in the year 2022, I am a Senior Technical Advisor who is FAC-C-DS certified. I still primarily procure IT products and services; however, my methodology for procuring such items, particularly digital services, has changed. I am responsible for awarding highly visible mission critical acquisitions. After becoming FAC-C-DS certified, I helped my office transition our approach to purchasing digital services. We now fully implement agile principles and our requirement documents are agile based as well.  The acquisition office works much more closely with our agency’s Agile Lifecycle Coaches and Scrum Masters to define requirements documents. In addition, my agency established a fully functional Agile Center of Excellence. This office provides and supports a number of services to Agile project teams, other teams seeking to embark upon the Agile Lifecycle (ALC) journey, and individuals who are simply curious about Agile practices within the agency. Additionally, the Agile Center of Excellence trains contracting staff on how to write agile based acquisition packages. Our agency has transitioned from writing Statements of Work (SOW) to writing Statements of Objectives (SOO). Also, as part of the evaluation criteria, we started requiring offerors to provide more tangible evidence of their capabilities such as code submission.

Now that my agency has (with the exception of some waterfall enthusiasts) gotten over the culture shock of implementing agile principles, we use an agile methodology on nearly all of our digital services acquisitions. Our agency utilizes the Scrum and Kanban agile methodologies. Before the agency decides which agile approach to use for a particular project, a Product Owner is assigned to the project to help select the best approach for the project. For simple and complicated systems such as bug fixes, maintenance, enhancements or infrastructure work or when a team has high familiarity with the technology and are close to agreement with the requirements of the product, a Kanban approach is recommended. On the other hand, when a complex system is being developed and/or when a new product with a newly formed team is being procured, the Kanban methodology is not recommended;  rather, a Scrum approach is recommended. As the team matures and has more familiarity with the product then they can decide to choose different agile framework as their project complexity moves from Complex or Chaotic system to Complicated system.

While what I just described is optimal, it is all future based, and my agency is a long way from fully adapting agile principles. As a FAC-C-DS certified acquisition professional, I believe I can contribute to implementing the framework described above. One of the first steps for me to take in order for my vision to materialize is to discover the extent to which agile principles are being implemented in my agency. Based on my shadowing event, I learned that some components do practice agile principles; however, I need to figure out how to engage more with this process. Once I determine what our agency is currently doing on the agile front, I can network and meet some of the key players within this process. Thereafter, I can begin to bring the agile discussion full circle by discussing how acquisition fits into the agile process.